Factorial vs Sesame HR (September 2026): an independent comparison

Factorial or Sesame HR: the verdict

Factorial vs Sesame HR: comparison table

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Factorial vs Sesame HR: what it costs per year

What Factorial and Sesame HR look like

Pricing: Sesame publishes every plan, Factorial publishes a floor

Sesame lists four plans per active employee per month on its English pricing page: Essential at $3.75 for time tracking, time off, holidays and shifts; Connect at $4.25, adding recruiting and internal communication; Growth at $6.25, covering the full employee lifecycle including performance; and Scale at $7.00, adding single sign-on and API access. Accounts need at least 15 employees. These prices apply to annual billing; monthly billing costs more (Essential $5.25 instead of $3.75), and a custom plan is available on request. On its Spanish pricing page, Essential starts at €4.75 per active employee per month with annual billing, or €5.25 with monthly billing, excluding VAT.

AI costs extra at Sesame. Its AI page lists Sesame AI as an add-on at $49 per month, or $42.50 per month billed annually, and the pricing page says the Enterprise versions of its modules include AI and automations.

Factorial's US pricing page says it starts at $8 per user per month, and its German page at €8. Every plan includes Factorial Core, and customers add modules such as time tracking, performance, recruiting, expenses or IT management for a tailored quote. In US dollars, Factorial's floor sits above Sesame's most expensive plan, though the units differ: per user at Factorial, per active employee at Sesame.

AI features: Factorial One is a platform agent, Sesame AI a drafting and analysis add-on

Factorial One answers questions from company policies, documents and Factorial data, drafts surveys, reports and job descriptions, analyzes uploaded files and respects each user's permissions. In recruiting, Factorial lists AI job specifications, candidate matching and CV summaries. One is switched on by your account manager or sales contact.

Sesame AI writes announcements and job offers, prepares evaluations, drafts emails, helps prepare interviews and satisfaction surveys, proposes action plans and helps interpret HR data. Existing Sesame customers can test it for 14 days.

The data handling differs. Factorial's help center says One runs on Microsoft Azure OpenAI in Sweden, does not train models on customer data and does not store prompts or responses. Sesame's privacy policy names OpenAI and The Rocket Science Group, both in the US, as recipients under the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, and does not state where customer data is hosted.

Where the products diverge: scope, scale and security paperwork

Both cover the HR basics: Sesame lists time tracking, shift management, payroll, recruiting, onboarding, internal communication, performance reviews, surveys and people analytics, plus training, OKRs, e-signatures, desk booking and expense control. Factorial goes further into company cards, procurement, SaaS management, IT inventory, device management and endpoint security.

Factorial is the larger company. Emprendedores put its annual recurring revenue at about €100 million against Sesame's €21 million, and Sesame's equity funding at €33 million; Factorial then raised €129 million at a €2.1 billion valuation in June 2026, according to EU-Startups. Both publish customer counts: Sesame's website claims more than 20,000 customers, Factorial's more than 16,000 companies.

On security, Factorial's trust center lists ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3 and ENS at high level, Spain's national security scheme. Sesame shows an ISO 27001 certification badge on its website; we found no SOC 2 or ENS listing on the pages we checked. For Factorial against a German rival, see Factorial vs Personio.

Country fit and compliance: both Spanish, with different routes into Latin America

Our directory lists both vendors as strong in Spain. In Spain, Ley 12/2021 gave works councils the right to be told the parameters, rules and instructions behind algorithms and AI systems that affect hiring, working conditions and profiling, which can cover AI that prepares evaluations or matches candidates.

Sesame opened its first office outside Spain in Mexico in February 2023 and today runs country sites for Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Peru and Brazil, besides the US and seven European countries. Digital Inside reported in August 2025 that Sesame had passed 15,000 customers in more than 30 countries, with France and Germany planned for 2026. Factorial runs main offices in Barcelona, Mexico City and São Paulo and calls Germany its top international growth market.

Across the EU, AI that filters job applications or evaluates performance is high-risk under Annex III of the AI Act, with obligations applying from December 2, 2027. Ask both vendors for their AI Act documentation and for a data processing agreement that names the hosting region.

Who should pick Factorial and who Sesame HR

The bottom line

Let scope and headcount decide. Sesame HR is the lower-cost route to time tracking and core HR for teams of 15 or more, with every plan price public. Factorial's published floor is higher, but it adds spending and IT tools and more security certifications; pick it when those matter more to you than the monthly rate.